This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I find myself looking back on the history of YouTube anti-woke politics in light of the whole Charlie Kirk thing. Because I never really knew or cared who Charlie Kirk was, and my first exposure to him led to a reaction of "oh this is just Stephen Crowder but as a smug Christian."
This led me to reflect on the declining quality of human being in the...words fail me. Alt media? Internet political influencers?
I have a lot of nostalgia for The SkepticsTM and that entire era of YouTube talking head. (Often not even a head, just an avatar pic.) Now whenever I fish around for that level of quality, it simply isn't to be found. We are all infected. We are all dumber than we used to be.
Some of this is downstream of the YouTube algorithm in the sense that it incentivized shorter more quickly-produced low-effort content. Back in the day people used to make video essays, or cringe compilations. If they did something live, it was a Hangout, an informal podcast involving people who sure look like genuine friends having genuine discussions. Often with no live video feed. These days it appears to be some guy pontificating off the top of his head, repeating himself often, talking in circles. Kyle Kulinski now does the same thing that Tim pool was doing a few years ago. Hassan Piker appears to just be an LA nepo-baby himbo socialite, and he's very much a step down from whatever Vaush is/was, who was in turn a step down from Chapo Trap House (these are all things I dislike, but I note the decline in quality).
I've also noticed the trad motive decay. Originally, "based" was a punchline and no one pretended to actually be socially conservative, in the same way that Marilyn Manson isn't actually a Satanist, all the upside-down crosses are just there to trigger the normies. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising; the original anti-woke thesis was "look I'm liberal/democrat just like you, but you're so smug and obnoxious and factually wrong I find myself becoming conservative just to spite you."
(That was the original troll op: trying to make the point that the other party is so thin-skinned, fragile and unreasonable that they'll very predictably flip their shit over "it's okay to be white.")
In particular, Twitch seems to be full of fucking townies. No one talks philosophy or has a dignified intellectual persona. The era of Sargon, Dr Layman, Dev, Kraut, and Vee shooting the shit as genuine friends is long over, it's just influencers chasing clout all the way down now.
TL;DR: Asmongold is a shittier Sargon, and current-year Carl is also a shitty caricature of himself.
This is a rambling drunken phonepost, so forgive me. I mourn for the lost Internet of yesteryear. The only place on YouTube I see anything like that old level of genuine quality is EFAP.
The number of living humans who are actually interested in "talking philosophy" is minuscule. Even among people who are otherwise highly intelligent and capable. Even TheMotte these days is more interested in the concrete play-by-play of current events than anything theoretical. (Although frankly, this is probably not too different from the historical norm on TheMotte. Current events have always dominated the discussion. We went through an anomalously philosophical period around 2022-2023 due to the advent of AI, and since then have regressed to the mean.)
What? I don't know what you mean by the last one, but I disagree with all the other ones, and I'm pretty sure I could write something doing all thr things you're telling people not to, and get lots of updoots.
I'm not questioning a bias existing, but you're getting in comically wrong.
Your most downvoted comment ever was this one, which as far as I can tell is trying to say that intelligence is a bad trait because being intelligent increases your ability to do things and some of those things are bad? Not really sure, some of the context is deleted comments.
Your second most downvoted comment ever is the comment I'm replying to right now, complaining that people downvote you for bad reasons.
It does seem like your takes on Ukraine in particular don't land with this audience. Aside from that it seems like you mostly get downvoted when you make low-effort dunks. And you just genuinely don't have that many downvoted comments.
All that said it seems like you genuinely do have different perspectives. I don't know that we have very many people who are fully immersed in Russian culture on here. I bet a lot of your stuff would land better if you expanded a bit on the things that seem obvious to you but which the rest of the people here seem not to be taking into account, particularly the things where mottizens are pushing for policies where there's common-knowledge russian history of how that went horribly wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link